John Tesh Biography

John Tesh (born July 9, 1952) is an American new age and contemporary Christian musician. He is also a nationally syndicated radio host, and has previously served as a sportscaster, news anchor and reporter. Tesh is an Eagle Scout.

He was born in Garden City, New York on Long Island, but grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Playing piano and trumpet from the age of 6, he studied with teachers from The Juilliard School and was named to the New York State Symphonic Orchestra in high school, while also playing the organ in a rock band.[1] Tesh studied communications and music at North Carolina State University graduating in 1975. While at NC State, he was initiated into Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. While in the area, Tesh worked as a news anchor at WTVD in Durham, North Carolina. After graduation, Tesh went to Orlando, Florida to take a television position.

His television career included a stint as a news anchor and reporter at WSM-TV in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1970s, where he often covered the same stories as Oprah Winfrey who worked at a competing Nashville station. He shuffled from Nasville to Raleigh to Orlando and finally to New York's WCBS where, at 23, he was its youngest reporter.[2] He hosted the television show Entertainment Tonight from 1986 to 1996.

Tesh also served as a sportscaster for events such as the Tour de France bicycle race in from 1983 through 1986 and Olympic gymnastics in 1992 and 1996. For the Tour de France coverage, Tesh has the distinction of being the anchor for the first American broadcast of the race.

He currently has a nationally-syndicated radio show called the John Tesh Radio Show, which plays "1980s, 1990s, and today's soft rock" music, interspersed with various factoids and other information Tesh considers useful to listeners, often with topics such as health and well-being. These factoids are called "Intelligence for Your Life."

Although understated in manner, Tesh is a skilled promoter. Throughout his career, he has been highly successful at hyping both others and himself. He is known for his uncanny commercial instincts and his flair for the dramatic. One of his talents is taking the relatively banal, making it catchy, and cloaking it in pomp in order to attract a mass audience. This has made him the target of playful barbs by comics like Jay Leno and the appearance of a 10 cent, garage-sale CD at the recent animated film Over The Hedge, which Tesh seems to not mind in the least. Another appearance playing up and with his "generic" status as a musician was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 1995, performing Black Sabbath's "The Wizard" with Dweezil Zappa and Ahmet Zappa... using a keytar, melding a non-metal musician with two that are, and using a typically non-metal instrument on a decidedly metal song. [3]

John Tesh's most memorable piece as a musician is, arguably, "Roundball Rock", the instrumental theme music for The NBA on NBC from 1990 to 2002. He also scored the background and theme music for the CBS coverage of the Tour de France.

He has been married since 1992 to actress Connie Sellecca. They have a daughter together, Prima Sellecchia Tesh, born on June 2, 1994.